an affront to dignities everywhere
by porcelaindakota
Summary: Otters that look like Sherlock Holmes.


Sherlock's first warning that something has gone terribly wrong is the tremendous _crash _that resounds from the sitting room. Its accompaniment is the slap of metal on human flesh, followed by porcelain shattering on wood—the tea set breaking, then—and, finally, pregnant with the most unspeakable potential for horror: a started shout, in John's voice, and then a crash to the floor.

Sherlock is over the threshold to his bedroom and on the first step in an instant, his finely-honed reflexes just as useful in the domestic realm as in the criminal one. From the presumed site of the accident, he can hear only ragged breathing. He calls John's name mid-sprint, receives no reply, and jumps the last three steps, nearly twisting his ankle on his landing.

John is on his back, on the floor, chest heaving, his left hand scrabbling at the carpet; scattered about his right side are white shards that mark the remains of their long-abused kettle. The table has fallen to its side, with all its papers and notebooks having slid to form a tremendous small mountain, and the chair is upended just beyond, clearly thrown in the pandemonium of John's descent to the floor. A dark, liquid stain seeps into John's red checked shirt, and for one long beat before he remembers the tea Sherlock's heart stops.

Strangely enough, John's laptop is open and covering his face.

"John?" Sherlock asks. John still hasn't moved or spoken, and remains lying under his laptop, gasping for breath, apparently having not noticed that he has a cut on his hand from the shards of the teapot and probably has burns from the tea and bruises from impact.

"_John," _Sherlock repeats, moving closer, kneeling next to his prone flatmate who seems determined to neither explain his ludicrous position nor offer the common human decency—a courtesy on which he's usually quite obnoxiously insistent—to assure his bewildered flatmate that he is alive. Sherlock reaches his hand under the obstructive laptop and finds John's head, feels for wetness or injury that would explain this inexcusable lapse.

Said army doctor makes a breathless wheezing noise from beneath his computer screen.

And Sherlock realizes that the great idiot is _laughing, _breathless and shaking with it, completely immobilized. Sherlock lifts the laptop from his face, is met with an undamaged John Watson, expression screwed up in a mirth so powerful that to the inexperienced he would appear to be suffering apoplexy.

"Sherlock," he manages to wheeze. "Oh. My. _God."_

John won't stop trembling, the complete and utter imbecile. "I think you've giggled your way into some sort of permanent disabling condition," Sherlock comments, still kneeling at John's head. Worry is replaced by relief and then quickly by a rare bewilderment.

The subject of this confusion shakes his head desperately. "Sherlock," he gasps. John quivers from head to toe, his bright blue eyes twinkling, alive and vital and Sherlock's efforts to think about anything other than his flatmate's rather well-muscled chest surging up and down and back again against the buttons of his shirt are failing miserably. Damn the man, thwarting Sherlock's logical processes at every possible moment.

Another quiet gasped "Sherlock." (Not helping. How has John Watson reversed him from panicked to turned on in a matter of seconds? Further investigation needed to alleviate these wild mood fluctuations.) And then: "Lestrade… sent me a link for the blog."

A whole sentence, quite astounding in John's state (and the mention of the blog is less than arousing. Helpful.) Sherlock rights the laptop from where he discarded it on the floor. What he sees on its screen horrifies him.

_Otters That Look Like Sherlock Holmes. _

…followed by several side-by-side comparisons of his more sensational newspaper clippings with the aforementioned aquatic mammal. If Sherlock has ever more gravely feared for the intelligence and dignity of the human species, or hated the trolls with whom he shares the Internet more, he cannot remember it.

John has regained enough breath to be audibly cackling now, carefully rolling away from the kettle shards to attempt to muffle his laughter in Sherlock's trouser leg. "It's… it's _uncanny… _" he attempts, before dissolving again.

Sherlock slams the laptop shut and stands. John, in his traitorous puddle, makes a small dismayed sound but otherwise does not pause in his antics. "I will have this removed within the hour," Sherlock declares, dramatically whipping round to remount the stairs.

"…the _faces_," Sherlock hears John weakly protest, and he slams his bedroom door.


End file.
